Header finance, compared before the crop is ready

A header carries two hour meters and the second one does the work in an assessment. Engine hours count everything — road travel, idling on the headland, waiting on the chaser bin. Separator or rotor hours count only the time the machine was actually threshing, which is where the wear lives. A machine showing 3,000 engine hours against 2,200 separator hours has been worked hard and steadily; the same engine hours against 1,300 separator hours is a very different machine. Lenders who know the asset ask for both numbers, and a used deal presented with only one of them invites the more conservative assumption.

Age matters less than that ratio and the paperwork behind it. Headers work a handful of intense weeks a year, so a ten-year-old machine with 1,800 separator hours and a full service file can present better than a five-year-old ex-contract machine that has done three times the threshing. Concave and rotor condition, sieve and elevator wear, and any front damage history are what an inspector looks for, and what a valuation reflects. Keep the dealer service records, the pre-season checks and the receipts for wear parts. On a used header those documents are not housekeeping — they are the difference between a machine valued on evidence and one valued on assumption.

Most new headers in Australia move on manufacturer or dealer finance, and there is nothing wrong with that — those programs are built for the asset and often settle quickly. The trap is treating the offer as the only option because it arrived first. A dealer offer and a panel quote are rarely comparing the same thing: term length, balloon size, deposit, fees, what happens at the end of term, and whether the facility is secured only by the machine or reaches across other assets you own. Line those up side by side and the cheapest headline is not always the cheapest deal over five years.

There is a second reason to hold a panel quote in your pocket: it changes the negotiation. A subsidised finance offer is usually funded out of the machine's price, so a buyer with independent finance approved can often ask what the machine costs on a straight cash settlement. Sometimes the answer is worth more than the finance concession; sometimes it is not, and the dealer program wins on the numbers. Either way you have made the comparison rather than assumed it. Dealer programs also tend to stop at the new-machine gate — used, private-sale, interstate and clearing-sale headers usually need a panel behind them regardless.

A header is not a complete machine until it has a front on it, and fronts are not small money. A wide draper front can add a six-figure sum to the invoice, a pickup front for windrowed crop is a separate item again, and anything that has to travel between blocks needs a front trailer to move it legally. Bought at the same time and written on the same supplier invoice, all of it can generally sit inside one facility — one settlement, one repayment, and a machine that arrives ready to strip rather than waiting on a front you are funding out of working capital.

Fronts also carry their own resale logic. A front matched to a common header model and a common crop width sells easily; an unusual width or an adapter-mounted front from another brand narrows the buyer pool and can pull the whole package's valuation down. Worth knowing before you buy a bargain front that only fits one machine. The same applies to bolt-on gear that genuinely earns its place — chaff decks, weed seed mills, yield monitoring and guidance upgrades can usually be financed within the package when they appear on the invoice. Retrofitting them later as small standalone amounts is a clumsier and generally more expensive exercise.

Header buying runs from late winter into spring, which means the machine is usually paid for months before the crop that justifies it is in the silo. Repayment timing should reflect that. In general terms, agricultural lenders offer annual, semi-annual and harvest-weighted structures, and a header financed in September ideally sees its first substantial repayment after the grain cheque clears rather than in the middle of the strip. That is negotiated at setup, not adjusted afterwards, so the application should state plainly when your income actually lands and what a below-average season looks like on the same figures.

Structure matters for tax as well as cash flow, and at header values the numbers are not trivial. Under a chattel mortgage you own the machine from settlement, and a GST-registered business can generally claim the GST on the purchase price as an input credit on the next BAS — on a A$550,000 header that is roughly A$50,000 back, often within weeks of a machine that cost you little out of pocket up front. Ownership from day one may also open depreciation options. Both points are general, both depend on your registration and reporting cycle, and both are worth confirming with your accountant while the structure can still be changed.

A header that harvests other people's crops is assessed differently from one that only strips your own. Contract harvesting produces documented income — rates per hectare, repeat clients, a run that moves north to south across the season — and that evidence carries real weight, particularly for a buyer with limited own-farm area behind the application. It cuts both ways: contract machines accumulate separator hours fast, so the term should be set against the hours the machine will realistically do, not the calendar. Booked hectares, last season's invoices and a client list are the most persuasive documents a contract harvesting application can carry.

Self-propelled forage harvesters sit in a similar bracket on price — roughly A$400,000 to A$900,000 — but a narrower one on resale. Australia runs far fewer of them than headers, they are concentrated among dairy, feedlot and silage contractors, and the buyer pool for a used one is correspondingly thin. Lenders read that: expect more attention to who the machine works for, how many hectares or tonnes a season it is committed to, and whether the operation could carry the repayment through a wet year or a lost contract. Row-independent maize fronts, pickup fronts and kernel processors bought with the machine can generally be financed inside the same facility.